Ray Cummings 9 min read

In his tower atop the great terraced pile that is his home and citadel, Peter Groff broods with hatred over the millions below, the richest, most powerful, most feared man in all the world.

Ray Cummings's 1940 story is a dark post-apocalyptic and psi-powers tale of a monstrous tyrant. Vivid, ominous golden-age pulp. Read it for a story where the world's cruelest magnate, hated and hating, wields power enough to threaten all humanity, in a lurid pulp parable of unchecked ambition.

In its time

Published in 1940, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

9 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).